Can I go where you go? Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce have reunited in Australia after a stormy week and a half following the Super Bowl.
The Kansas City Chiefs tight end joined the “Lover” singer in Sydney on Thursday ahead of her hit Eras tour there. Kelce landed in Australia after playing a round of golf in Las Vegas, boarding a private jet in Los Angeles on Wednesday and making a quick stop in Hawaii. It's a trip of almost 8,000 miles for those keeping track at home.
Yes, that's even more than the pop superstar's historic trip to Las Vegas from Tokyo earlier this month to watch Kelce win his third Super Bowl. Swift flew 6,000 miles practically overnight to see the big game after wrapping up her tour in Japan on February 10. And that didn't faze her because she, as she told her man duly surprised in the field, “Jet lag is a choice.” (And she got a lot of heat for that comment, too.)
Aerial footage provided to NBC News by Channel Seven Australia showed Kelce exiting a Bombardier private jet and entering a van in Sydney on Thursday. He was joined by his teammate Ross Travis, who shared a photo of the Australian coastline from inside the plane on Instagram.
Among the A-list couple's first outings? A trip to Sydney Zoo, which Swift had visited without her boyfriend the day before. According to Australian media, the couple visited the zoo for a private tour and were photographed hand-feeding a kangaroo and taking selfies amidst a variety of PDA. (Swift, who has been publicly linked to Kelce since September, hasn't really shown off their relationship on social media, but notably posted her first TikTok featuring her boyfriend “accidentally going to a club” with his parents in Las Vegas the day after his team's victory over the San Francisco 49ers.)
Swift arrived in Melbourne last week after a stop in Honolulu. Not surprisingly, the new Chiefs super fan was photographed sporting a KC victory cap when she arrived. She was joined by her Eras tour opener Sabrina Carpenter before her boyfriend's arrival, dined at the elegant Pellegrino 2000 and visited Accor Stadium on Wednesday, the Olympic stadium where she will perform four consecutive shows starting Friday.
All that travel around the world hasn't gone unnoticed either, especially after Taylor's jet watch made headlines before the Super Bowl. By the way, the musician is in the middle of a war of words with a college student who is precisely following his private jet as he travels around the world for business and pleasure.
The “You Need to Calm Down” singer sent a cease-and-desist letter to Jack Sweeney in December alleging that the University of Central Florida student “engaged in harassing and harassing behavior.” Her lawyer, James Slater, responded last month by saying Sweeney is not a “credible threat” to Swift, rejecting the harassment allegations and saying Swift's camp cited no law to support her lawsuit. On Monday, Slater told TMZ that he and his partners didn't see a realistic legal path Swift could take if she wanted to press the issue.
But the suits can deal with that. Meanwhile, the 34-year-old artist returned to Australia on that plane last week to perform three shows at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, where she achieved her biggest audience of the tour so far: 96,000 on February 16.
“This is the biggest show we've done on this tour or any tour I've ever done,” the “Anti-Hero” singer. he told the crowd at the sold-out stadium. “That's the version you're getting from me tonight, the version that's completely blown away by the fact that so many of you would want to hang out with us on a Friday night in Melbourne.”
The 14-time Grammy winner, who has become the subject of many university courses, and her outings in Melbourne coincided with a “Swiftposium” in the city, an academic conference where academics converged to discuss the economic impact and other implications of the Swift's popularity. . Swift's tour, the first to earn more than $1 billion, and its corresponding “Swiftonomics” have been a boon to the local economies she passes through since its release in March.
Following her shows in Sydney, Swift concludes the Asian leg of her tour with six concerts in Singapore between March 2 and 9, her only stop in Southeast Asia. City-state government officials awarded the singer one of her many business grants earlier this week, recognizing her efforts to persuade her to perform there and the potential economic boost her concerts would bring, reported Reuters.
The tourism board and Culture Ministry did not disclose the amount of the subsidy, but said the ministry worked with concert promoter AEG Presents to get Swift to perform in Singapore. (Swift was rumored to have been paid $2.77 million per show, supposedly on the condition that Singapore was Eras' exclusive stop in Southeast Asia, which has sparked her own controversy.)
It's unclear if Kelce, who also traveled to Buenos Aires in November to see the singer perform (and receive what could be the most viewed hug race in history), will be present. The football star was not among those attending his sold-out shows in Melbourne last week as he and his team recovered from the deadly shooting at the Chiefs' victory parade. One woman was killed in the Feb. 14 shooting and nearly two dozen others were wounded, including several children. Two adults were charged with murder Tuesday in connection with the gun violence.
The NFL star donated $100,000 to two sisters injured in the shooting, and he and his brother, Philadelphia Eagles center Jason Kelce, urged others to donate to help victims recover from the fatal incident. Swift also donated $100,000 via GoFundMe to the family who lost his mother in the shooting.
